BOOK: Leonard Francis TAYLOR, Catholic Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). ISBN 9781108486125, £ 85.00

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book on catholic cosmopolitanism and human rights. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

It is because Catholicism played such a formative role in the construction of Western legal culture that it is the focal point of this enquiry. The account of international law from its origin in the treaties of Westphalia, and located in the writing of the Grotian tradition, had lost contact with another cosmopolitan history of international law that reappeared with the growth of the early twentieth century human rights movement. The beginnings of the human rights movement, grounded in democratic sovereign power, returned to that moral vocabulary to promote the further growth of international order in the twentieth century. In recognising this technique of periodically returning to Western cosmopolitan legal culture, this book endeavours to provide a more complete account of the human rights project that factors in the contribution that cosmopolitan Catholicism made to a general theory of sovereignty, international law and human rights.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leonard Francis Taylor, National University of Ireland, Galway
Leonard Taylor is a graduate of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in National University of Ireland, Galway, where he lectures in human rights law. He is also an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Technology, Sligo.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1. Catholic cosmopolitan and the birth of human rights
2. Catholic cosmopolitanism from the centre to the periphery
3. Catholic cosmopolitanism from the periphery to international concern
4. Locating a modern Christian cosmopolitanism
5. An imperfect cosmopolitan project
Conclusion.

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK REVIEW: Martin HECKEL, Martin Luthers Reformation und das Recht (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 2016, XIV + 988 S., ISBN 978-3-16-154211-4, EUR 69,00 by Isabelle DEFLERS (Freibourg/Breisgau) Sehepunkte 18 (2018), 11

(image source: Sehepunkte)

First paragraph:

Das Reformationsjubiläum im Jahr 2017 wurde von einer unüberschaubaren Anzahl an Neuerscheinungen in den unterschiedlichsten Gattungen begleitet. Unter ihnen ragt die monumentale Studie Martin Heckels über das Verhältnis von Luthers reformatorischer Lehre zu seinem Verständnis vom Recht heraus. Das Buch enthält nicht nur eine gründliche und umfangreiche Untersuchung der Auswirkungen der lutherisch ausgeprägten Theologie auf die Art und Weise, wie Recht zu definieren sei, sondern darüber hinaus auch die persönliche Reflexion eines 89-jährigen Gelehrten über den Stellenwert des Kirchenrechts heutzutage. Somit zieht das 988 Seiten umfassende Buch ein Fazit über das eigene Œuvre und die eigene Disziplin, stellt aber kein Vermächtnis dar, denn Heckel erwähnt im Vorwort zwei geplante Fortsetzungen: zunächst einen Band über die Rechtsentwicklung im Reich und in den Territorien bis zum Westfälischen Frieden und einen dritten Band über die Wandlungen des evangelischen Kirchenrechts und Staatskirchenrechts bis in die Gegenwart.

Read further on Sehepunkte.
(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK: Ignacio DE LA RASILLA DEL MORAL and Ayesha SHAHID, eds., International Law and Islam (Leiden-New York: Brill | Nijhoff, 2018). ISBN 978-90-04-38837-6, €165.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill has published a book dealing with the role of Islam in the history of international law, co-edited by our former ESIL IG president, Prof. dr. Ignacio de la Rasilla (Wuhan University Institute of International Law).

ABOUT THE BOOK

International Law and Islam: Historical Explorations offers a unique opportunity to examine the Islamic contribution to the development of international law in historical perspective. The role of Islam in its various intellectual, political and legal manifestations within the history of international law is part of the exciting intellectual renovation of international and global legal history in the dawn of the twenty-first century. The present volume is an invitation to engage with this thriving development after ‘generations of prejudiced writing’ regarding the notable contribution of Islam to international law and its history.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Ignacio de la Rasilla, Ph.D. (2011) Geneva, is Han Depei Chair Professor of International Law at Wuhan University, Institute of International Law. He has published extensively on international law and its history including In the Shadow of Vitoria (Brill-Nijhoff, 2017). Ayesha Shahid, Ph.D. (2008) University of Warwick, UK, is Senior Lecturer in Law at Coventry Law School, Coventry University. She has published extensively on Islamic Law and Human Rights and is the author ofSilent Voices, Untold Stories (OUP, 2010).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ignacio de la Rasilla, Islam and the Global Turn in the History of International Law

Ignacio de la Rasilla, The Protean Historical Mirror of International Law

Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, How Should International Lawyers Study Islamic Law and Its Contribution to International Law?

Ayesha Shahid, An Exploration of the ‘Global’ History of International Law: Some Perspectives from within the Islamic Legal Traditions

John D. Haskell, Subjectivity and Structures: The Challenges of Methodology in the Study of the History of International Law and Religion

Robert Kolb, The Basis of Obligation in Treaties of Ancient Cultures – Pactum Est Servandum?

Jean Allain, Khadduri as Gatekeeper of the Islamic Law of Nations?

Ignacio Forcada Barona, In Search of the Lost Influence: Islamic Thinkers and the Spanish Origins of International Law

Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal & Frédéric Mégret, The Other ‘Other’: Moors, International Law and the Origin of the Colonial Matrix

Luigi Nuzzo, Law, Religion and Power: Texts and Discourse of Conquest

Ilias Bantekas, Land Rights in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman State Succession Treaties

Haniff Ahamat & Nizamuddin Alias, The Evolution of the Personality of the Malay Sultanate States

Matthias Vanhullebusch, On the Abodes of War and Peace in the Islamic Law of War: Fact or Fiction?

Mohamed Badar, Ahmed Al-Dawoody & Noelle Higgins, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law of Rebellion: Its Significance to the Current International Humanitarian Law Discourse

More information here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK: Martti KOSKENNIEMI, Mónica GARCÍA-SALMONES ROVIRA & Paolo AMOROSA, International Law and Religion. Historical and Comparative Perspectives [The Theory and History of International Law, eds. Nehal BHUTA, Anthony PAGDEN & Benjamin STRAUMANN] (Oxford: OUP, 2017), 480 p. ISBN 9780198805878, £ 80

(Image source: OUP)

Abstract:

This book maps out the territory of international law and religion challenging received traditions in fundamental aspects. On the one hand, the connection of international law and religion has been little explored. On the other, most of current research on international legal thought presents international law as the very victory of secularization. By questioning that narrative of secularization this book approaches these traditions from a new perspective. From the Middle Ages' early conceptualizations of rights and law to contemporary political theory, the chapters bring to life debates concerning the interaction of the meaning of the legal and the sacred. The contributors approach their chapters from an array of different backgrounds and perspectives but with the common objective of investigating the mutually shaping relationship of religion and law. The collaborative endeavour that this volume offers makes available substantial knowledge on the question of international law and religion.

Table of contents:

Martti Koskenniemi, “International Law and Religion: no Stable Ground”

Part I: Natural Law and Ius Gentium
Sarah Mortimer, “Law, Justice and Charity in a Divided Christendom: 1500-1625”
Pia Valenzuela, “Between Scylla and Charybdis: Aquinas’ Political Thought and his Notion of Natural Law and Ius Gentium”  Mary M. Keys, “Religion, Empire and Law Among Nations in the City of God. From the Salamanca School to Augustine, and Back Again”
Janne Nijman, “Grotius’ Imago Dei Anthropology. Grounding Ius Naturae et Gentium”
Ofir Haivri, “John Selden and the Jewish Religious Fountainhead of the International Law of the Sea”

Part II: Human Rights, Between History, The International and Religion
John Haskell, “The Religious/Secular Debate in Human Rights Literature. Constitutive Tensions between Christian, Islamic, and Secular Perspectives”
Monica García-Salmones, “Natural Rights in Albert the Great. Beyond Objective and Subjective Divides”
Pasquale Annicchino, “The Past is Never Dead. Christian Anti-internationalism and Human Rights”
Pamela Slotte, “Whose Justice? What Political Theology? On Christian and Theological Approaches to Human Rights in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries”

Part III: International Law, Religion, and Territory in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean
Moussa Abou Ramadan, “Muslim Jurists’ Criteria for the Divisionist of the World intro Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam”
Nahed Samour, “From Imperial to Dissident. Approaches to Territory in Islamic International Law”
Reut Yael Paz, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem. Religion, International Law and Jerusalem”

Part IV: Political Theology and International Legal Theory
Ileana M. Porras, "The Doctrine of the Providential Function of Commerce in International Law. Idealizing Trade"
Immi Tallgren, "The Faith in Humanity and International Criminal Law"
Michele Nicoletti, "Religion and Empire. Carl Schmitt's Katechon between International Relations and the Philosophy of History"
Elena Paris, "International Law-making and Metaphysical Foundations of Universality. Retrieving an Alternative Metaphysics"
Paul W. Kahn, "The Law of Nations and the Origin of American Law"
Paolo Amorosa, "Messianic Visions of the United States. International Law, Religion and the Cuban Intervention, 1898-1917"

On the editors:

Edited by Martti Koskenniemi, Academy Professor, University of Helsinki, Mónica García-Salmones Rovira, Post-doc Fellow, University of Helsinki, and Paolo Amorosa, Doctoral Candidate, University of Helsinki
Martti Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service in 1978-1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) in 2002-2006. He has held visiting professorships in, among other places, New York University, Columbia University, University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, and Universities of Brussels, Melbourne, Paris, Sao Paulo and Utrecht. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and has a doctorate h.c. from the Universities of Uppsala, Frankfurt and McGill.
Mónica García-Salmones is adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the research project History of International Law: between Religion and Empire. She has published a monograph on the history of international legal positivism. More recently her research has focused in the early history of international law, with a focus in the study of the conceptual, philosophical and historical continuities between the moderns and previous theological theories
Paolo Amorosa is a doctoral candidate and a member of the research project 'Intellectual History of International Law: Religion and Empire' at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. Prior to that, he has been teaching international law and human rights at Tallinn Law School, Tallinn University of Technology. He received his LLM degree in Public International Law from Leiden University and worked as a research assistant at the Grotius Center for International Legal Studies and at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See. His recent work has focused on international legal thought in the United States in the early 20th century.

More information with Oxford University Press.

BOOK: Martti KOSKENNIEMI, Walter RECH & Manuel JIMÉNEZ FONSECA (eds.), International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations [The History and Theory of International Law]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Dec 2016, 416p. ISBN 978-0198795575, £ 80.

(image source: amazon)

Oxford University Press will publish a volume on 1 December 2016 on the theme International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations. This is a product of the project "International Law, Religion and Empire" under the direction of Martti Koskenniemi at the Eric Castrén Institute (Helsinki).

Book description:

In times in which global governance in its various forms, such as human rights, international trade law, and development projects, is increasingly promoted by transnational economic actors and international institutions that seem to be detached from democratic processes of legitimation, the question of the relationship between international law and empire is as topical as ever. By examining this relationship in historical contexts from early modernity to the present, this volume aims to deepen current understandings of the way international legal institutions, practices, and narratives have shaped specifically imperial ideas about and structures of world governance. As it explores fundamental ways in which international legal discourses have operated in colonial as well as European contexts, the book enters a heated debate on the involvement of the modern law of nations in imperial projects. Each of the chapters contributes to this emerging body of scholarship by drawing out the complexity and ambivalence of the relationship between international law and empire. They expand on the critique of western imperialism while acknowledging the nuances and ambiguities of international legal discourse and, in some cases, the possibility of counter-hegemonic claims being articulated through the language of international law. Importantly, as the book suggests that international legal argument may sometimes be used to counter imperial enterprises, it maintains that international law can barely escape the Eurocentric framework within which the progressive aspirations of internationalism were conceived.

Table of contents:

Introduction, Martti Koskenniemi
Part I: Epistemologies of Empire and International Law 1: Provincializing Grotius: International Law and Empire in a Seventeenth-Century Malay Mirror, Arthur Weststeijn
2: Indirect Hegemonies in International Legal Relations: The Debate of Religious Tolerance in Early Republican China, Stefan Kroll
3: International Law, Empire, and the Relative Indeterminacy of Narrative, Walter Rech
Part II: Legal Discourses of Empire 4: The Concepts of Universal Monarchy and Balance of Power in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century-a Case Study, Peter Schröder
5: Between Faith and Empire: The Justification of the Spanish Intervention in the French Wars of Religion in the 1590s, Randall Lesaffer
6: Jus gentium and the Transformation of Latin American Nature: One More Reading of Vitoria?, Manuel Jiménez Fonseca
7: Cerberus: The State, the Empire, and the Company as Subjects of International Law in Grotius and the Peace of Westphalia, José-Manuel Barreto
8: Revolution, Empire, and Utopia: Tocqueville and the Intellectual Background of International Law, Julie Saada
Part III: Managing Empire: Imperial Administration and Diplomacy 9: Towards the Empire of a 'Civilizing Nation': The French Revolution and its Impact on Relations with the Ottoman Regencies in the Maghreb, Christian Windler
10: A Comporting Sovereign, Tribes, and the Ordering of Imperial Authority in Colonial Upper Canada of the 1830s, PG McHugh
11: Territory, Sovereignty, and the Construction of the Colonial Space, Luigi Nuzzo
Part IV: A Legal Critique of Empire? 12: An Anti-Imperialist Universalism? Jus Cogens and the Politics of International Law, Umut Özsu
13: Drift towards an Empire? The Trajectory of American Reformers in the Cold War, Hatsue Shinohara
14: Imperium sine fine: Carneades, the Splendid Vice of Glory, and the Justice of Empire, Benjamin Straumann
15: Scepticism of the Civilizing Mission in International Law, Andrew Fitzmaurice 

On the editors:

Martti Koskenniemi is Academy Professor and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki, a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has held visiting professorships at New York University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Utrecht, Columbia University, the University of São Paulo, the University of Toronto, and the Universities of Paris I, II, X and XVI. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service from 1978 to 1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) from 2002 to 2006. His publications include From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989), The GentleCivilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2001), The Politics of International Law (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to International Law (2012, co-edited with Professor James Crawford). 

Walter Rech is a postdoctoral researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. His research interests are located in the history and theory of international law and international politics. His publications include Enemies of Mankind: Vattel's Theory of Collective Security ( 2013). 

Manuel Jiménez Fonseca is a doctoral researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki. His research interests include the historical relationship between international law and nature, development, and social movements. His publications include 'The Colonization of American Nature and the Early Developments of International Law' 12 Journal of the History of International Law (2010) 189. 

The book can be pre-ordered with amazon.